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RPM is an important piece of Linux infrastructure. It is the native package manager for a number of major distributions, including Red Hat’s enterprise offerings, Fedora, and SUSE. The Linux Standard Base specification requires that all compliant systems offer RPM – even those which are built around a different package management system wireless internet. If RPM does not work, the system is not generally manageable. So it may be a little surprising to learn that the current status and maintainership of RPM is unclear at best.

Once upon a time, RPM was the “Red Hat Package Manager.” In a bid to establish RPM as a wider standard – and, perhaps, to get some development help – Red Hat tried to turn RPM into a community project – rebranding it as the “RPM Package Manger” in the process. But core RPM development remained at Red Hat, under the care of an employee named Jeff Johnson. That, it would seem, is where the trouble starts dsl.

Back in early 2004, an RPM bug report was filed. The reporting user had made a little mistake, in that he had tried to install a package on a system where /usr was mounted read-only. Needless to say, this operation did not work as intended – an outcome which the bug reporter could live with. This person, however, did think that it might have been better if RPM had not corrupted its internal database in the process of failing. He suggested that RPM should keep its internal records in order, even if the system administrator has requested something which cannot be done.

The ensuing conversation – lasting for over two years – deserves to become a textbook example in how not to respond to bug reports. Mr. Johnson took the position that, since RPM was being asked to do something erroneous, its subsequent mangling of the package database was not a bug. Instead, it seems, this behavior should be seen as an appropriate consequence for having done something stupid. Mr. Johnson repeatedly closed the bug, stating his refusal to fix it. Numerous other participants in the discussion made it clear that they disagreed with this “resolution” of the bug, but nothing, it seemed, could convince the RPM maintainer to put in a fix windows backup software.